


Bring Him Home

by seventymilestobabylon



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Is a Good Bro, Fix-It of Sorts, Flip Phone, M/M, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), WinterFalcon if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-14
Updated: 2016-11-14
Packaged: 2018-08-30 22:16:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8551246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventymilestobabylon/pseuds/seventymilestobabylon
Summary: Tony misses Steve very badly after the Accords. Some days he deals with it better than other days.(a fic featuring the booty call flip phone, minor kidnappings, and time jumps between chapters because the election has been happening and my brain has been too mush to make a proper plot)





	1. Words of Affirmation

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Polski available: [Sprowadź go do domu](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14201267) by [Hiddlesconda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hiddlesconda/pseuds/Hiddlesconda)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Political note: I haven't tagged this as pro- or anti-Accords, since I don't think it comes down on one side or the other: I am pro, but the characters don't get into a lot of debate within the fic. Tony still believes in the Accords, and Steve still doesn't, and they don't talk about it that much. In this first chapter, there's a press conference about Steve doing superhero activity in countries that _haven't_ signed the Accords, and both Steve and Tony think this is Heroism by Steve -- obviously a debatable premise! If you have a hard time reading fic that's not strongly pro-Accords, this may not be the one for you -- hit me up with any questions you may have!

The phone is for emergencies, so that’s—yeah.

The phone is for fucking emergencies.

And Tony knows, because he’s had Steve hooked up to monitors before at moments when they’ve gotten The Call, that when The Call comes, when it’s an emergency and they have to go, Steve’s heart rate goes through the roof.

Like it’s his first ever battle. Like he’s a raw recruit, like he hasn’t been in a hundred fucking battles with every enemy Tony can imagine, like he hasn’t watched friends fall—

Or looked at another way, exactly like he’s watched friends fall.

So the phone is for fucking emergencies and Tony doesn’t use it. He’s not going to do that to Steve, if it’s not a real emergency.

The day he finds out Bucky Barnes went back into cryofreeze, he gets drunker than he’s been since he thought he was dying. He does it alone, because he’s an icon and there’s no more fucking Captain America for the world to look up to, there’s just him, there’s just fucking him, and Rhodey is out of commission and Nat’s barely speaking to him, and Vision’s too uncanny for anyone to identify with so there you go. Tony Fucking Stark. Earth’s Mightiest Hero.

He’s never had much of a gag reflex (imagine your own dick joke, he’s made them all) so he spends the night slumped exhaustedly over the toilet in his ensuite, wishing he could throw up, wishing he could hear Steve’s voice. He puts his fingers down his throat and keeps them there until his face is streaked wet—

—not tears, he isn’t crying, his eyes are just watering, but if someone saw him, if Steve did, they wouldn’t know the difference and maybe they would feel sorry for him or—

—be realistic, if someone saw him, if Steve did, they’d think, _fucking pathetic drunk bastard_ and they’d leave him.

Again. More.

He doesn’t throw up. He falls asleep eventually. In the morning, his face is tacky with dried tears, and he’s shivering and sore from sleeping on hard tile, and he forgot he had this fucking press conference to talk about fucking Nomad.

It’s Steve, of course. Nomad. Who else could it be? Helping the helpless in mostly countries that haven’t signed the Sokovia Accords, what a coincidence, and Tony and Ross are doing this dance where they each pretend the other one doesn’t know. Ross is trying to catch Tony out in a lie. Tony’s trying to not have to start another war with his best fucking friend.

Former.

And not best. Fucking _arrogant._ Fuck that. What is he to Steve? Government stooge.

As he’s walking towards the press room, trying not to think about how many of these journalists he’s lied to, fucked, dodged, paid off, in his years in the public eye, Ross catches up with him and offers him a file.

(It’s this passive-aggressive shit Tony can’t stand about Ross, except actually it’s everything he can’t stand about Ross, up to and including the fact that he’s seen tape of Ross taunting a captive Zemo and it’s not that he gives a shit what happens to Zemo. He _doesn’t,_ but he has fucking nightmares about Steve being in one of those glass cages, blue eyes bright with defiance, while Ross, while Ross—

He wakes up gasping. He can’t get back to sleep, after those dreams.

Ross knows Tony doesn’t like to be handed things. He knows and he keeps trying it. Pushing, pushing, pushing.)

“Give it to my assistant,” Tony tells him. “And I’ll—”

“It’s about Captain Rogers,” says Ross.

Tony’s not stupid. He keeps moving. You never stop moving; that’s how they get you. He swivels, walking backwards while he talks to Ross. “Is that even—do you get to keep your title once you’ve gone AWOL, or— Look into that, Friday. Captain Rogers isn’t my problem anymore,” and he spins and shoves into the double doors.

He’s got good timing. In another life he could have been an actor. He thinks he’d have been great at it.

They ask him if the Avengers are going to reach out to Nomad.

“Nah, we’re not hiring. Helen.”

Helen asks if Nomad presents a threat to US military interests abroad.

“I can’t tell you how far above my paygrade that question is. You’re gonna have to talk to Mr. Cook about that one. I’m strictly a hired gun these days.”

If he gives any credence to the rumors that Steve Rogers might be providing intelligence to Nomad and his crew, or even—

“If there’s any evidence to support that, it hasn’t crossed my desk yet. Yeah, in the back, blue tie, sorry, I can’t be bothered learning new names these days.”

“Mr. Stark,” says the same reporter. “Returning to the question about Steve Rogers’s identity—”

Tony doesn’t, he does not flinch. “We’re no longer in touch. In the back, blue tie.”

“Mr. Stark, if I may, you and Captain Rogers were close friends and colleagues for a number of years, do you honestly expect us to believe that—”

Tony’s too hung over for this. “I’ve said repeatedly that we’re no longer—”

“—if he does have a connection with Nomad, doesn’t that present a serious threat to America’s national security, and—”

“Is this a fucking joke?” Tony’s voice comes out louder than he intends, and the reporter—she’s from some tiny local newspaper, the Buttfuck-Egypt Herald, she’s not worth his fucking time, out here trying to be intrepid, prying at him, poking around for his weak points. “Nomad’s saving lives. If Steve Rogers has a connection with them, he’s using it to make the world a better place, and all of you here know that. I know we’re all hopping on board the discrediting Steve Rogers train, and it looks like a great place to be, but you just fucking trust me that when the shit hits the fan you’re going to be crying to him to come back and save you and you better _hope_ he’s as good as seventy years of propaganda made him out to be.”

There’s a second of silence, and then an explosion of voices and flash bulbs, and nobody hears Tony say, softly, “He is.”

He leaves, after that. He doesn’t take any more questions, because if he keeps talking about Steve he’s going to cry. There’s video of him leaving. His eyes are weary, bloodshot.

Some hero.

By the time he gets home, Friday’s pulled together what he asked for, Ross’s files on Nomad, implicating Steve, Steve’s last few locations.

Wilson’s with him. There’s pictures. Wilson’s how they’ll get him, Tony knows that. They’re too scared to touch Wanda, and Wanda’s been on her own before, anyway. Clint’s been theirs for years, they still think they can get Clint back. But Sam Wilson’s vulnerable, and he’s close to Steve. He’s how they’ll reel Steve back in.

Rhodey calls, and Tony sends it to voicemail.

He rubs his thumb along the edge of Steve’s flip phone as he scans through Ross’s files. It’s a habit he’s gotten into, something comforting about the feel of it.

It’s possible that Steve isn’t the point at all. It’s possible Ross is using this, Steve, to bring Tony to heel. The State Department’s been asking about his tech, fishing around, wanting new weapons, new ways to hack into other countries’ systems. None of this is covered in the Accords. Tony’s brain isn’t enhanced and the State Department doesn’t have jurisdiction.

Give the government an inch.

God, he’s tired.

 _Captain Rogers isn’t my problem anymore._ What a lie that was. He closes his eyes and he can see Steve’s face, eyes cast down, the fringe of his eyelashes. If Ross finds Steve, he’ll shut him away, deeper than the Raft, deeper than the sea. Ross doesn’t like to lose.

Rhodey thinks Tony’s in love with Steve, but it isn’t that. Nothing works without him, is the thing. Steve could hold the entire broke world together with the sheer force of his will, and without him, land masses are crumbling every place Tony tries to set his feet.

The phone vibrates under Tony’s thumb.

Then doesn’t.

He thinks he’s maybe hallucinating. DTs. Serve him right, honestly. He’s treated his body like shit, it’s a miracle it hasn’t rebelled before now.

The phone vibrates under Tony’s thumb.

He pulls it out, opens it up, clamshell fucker. He forgot that opening the phone up answers it, and when Steve’s voice says, “Hello? Tony?” he’s so surprised that he nearly drops it. “Tony?”

“Hi,” Tony says. He doesn’t say Steve’s name. He doesn’t trust himself.

“Oh,” says Steve, soft.

For a while they don’t say anything. Tony can hear his own breathing, too loud, desperate. He’s hung over is why. Finally he gives up. “You okay, Cap?”

“Yeah,” Steve says. His voice sounds like the way he gets when he’s concussed, vague and dreamy, but Tony doesn’t think he’d be Steve’s first call in the case of concussion, so he just waits. “Yeah,” Steve says again. “I, uh. You did a press conference.”

Tony groans. “Don’t read too much into it, Cap, I’m unbelievably fucking hung over.”

He waits for the judgmental sigh. Steve hates it when he drinks. But Steve says, “I wish I were there with you,” and he doesn’t sound angry, just sad.

“Yeah, well,” says Tony. “You blew that to shit when you— _fuck,_ I’m not—what do you want? What do you want from me?”

“I don’t know.” Steve’s voice is small.

If Steve had called him up angry, Tony would have known exactly what to do. But sadness—Tony doesn’t think he can take Steve’s sadness. “Ross has been tracking you,” he says.

“Yeah,” says Steve. “Me and Sam’ve been laying some stuff down for him, just to— Don’t worry about it. We’re keeping an eye on him.”

“Fuck, don’t _tell_ me this shit, Steve! What the fuck am I supposed to—you know we’re on opposite sides, right? What’re you gonna tell Sam’s mother when you get him killed cause I ran right back to Ross and told him you’re laying a false trail?”

“Good point,” says Steve dryly. “I know how much you love cooperating with Ross.”

“He’ll use Sam.”

“I know that,” says Steve, calm.

Tony should be furious, but Steve’s certainty settles him a little. If Steve Rogers has a plan that involves Ross never finding Sam, then that’s what’ll happen. There’s a whole song about Steve Rogers and his plans. “Do you,” he says. “Need anything.”

“Nah.”

“You called,” Tony points out. “Was that in aid of something?”

“Oh,” says Steve. He sounds a little surprised. “No, I’m—I wanted to thank you, I guess. For sticking up for me. I know I’m not the most popular—it’s—I know if I were there and I did something like that, went off message like that at a press conference, you’d call it a dumbfuck move and— But you, I mean—you meant it.”

Yeah, he meant it.

“I’d come,” says Steve. “I’ll always come back, if you need me.”

“I know,” says Tony, very close to casual. “You said that. In your letter. Didn’t really need a whole phone call for it, especially considering you haven’t—” Cared enough to call before, is what he wants to say, but he bites it off.

“Yeah.” Steve sounds sad again. “Well, I—it meant something, hearing you—it meant something, to me. I wanted you to know that. I’ll—I’ll let you get back to—I’ll let you go, okay?”

Stay, Tony wants to beg. Come back, I need you, I can’t do this by myself, please, please. “Okay,” he says. “Yeah. You’re—you’re welcome, I guess. Don’t let Ross find you.”

“I won’t. Take care of yourself, Tony.”

“Yeah.”

A long time after he hangs up the phone, Tony sits staring down at it in his hand.

If Steve gives a shit about him, he’ll call back. He’ll call back and say more.

The phone doesn’t ring.


	2. Quality Time

Tony’s mouth tastes cottony, and his head is pounding so hard he thinks he might actually buck the trend and throw up. Wherever the bad guys have thrown him, it’s pitch-black, and his eyes aren’t adjusting. His hands are twisted up above his head. Handcuffs. Kinky. They’ve left his legs free, whoever they are. If he wriggles a little bit—

“Tony?”

Fuck, no.

“Steve?” His voice sounds bad, rough and scraped. Like he’s getting over a cold, or like he’s screamed his throat raw.

Steve is breathing loud and unsteady.

“Steve?” he says again.

“I’m here,” Steve says, shaky. “I—God, Tony. You weren’t answering me and I thought they’d—I thought. I yelled for someone to—I thought, I thought.”

Oh, God, Steve sounds young. It is unbearable, how young he sounds, how scared. “Well, don’t piss your pants, Cap, I’m fine over here. Just a little, ah—” He rattles his handcuffs for punctuation. “We still in London? I always picture London being full of dungeons. Not, you know, Transylvania full, but.”

Steve manages a thin laugh. Attaboy. “I think so.”

“How long’ve we been—”

“Maybe a week, for me,” says Steve. “They brought you in last night. For—” His voice goes thick. “Motivation, they said.”

Oh.

“Don’t tell them anything,” Tony says gallantly, this being the thing that people say in movies, when it’s a question of torture. “I’m not worth it.” He figures he might as well say it now, while he’s still basically himself. When they tortured him in Afghanistan, he doesn’t want to think about it and he won’t think about it but had he held up or, or— He can’t remember it that well.

“I don’t—” Steve swallows audibly. “Now that—I’m not honestly sure what, um. I mean I don’t think I’m the one they need.”

Yeah, that’s much worse. He’s seen Steve’s body bloody at his feet. He’ll sing like a bird if that’s what it takes to prevent it from coming true. Of course he will. Once he sacrificed the whole world to prevent that from coming true. What’s a little bit of classified information given up to enemies foreign or domestic, by comparison?

“Tony?” Steve’s voice wavers.

“Yeah,” says Tony. He remembers water in Afghanistan. He thinks of Steve gagging on it, gasping for air, choking, sputtering. He’ll say, _Stop, please._ He’ll say, _I’ll tell you anything you want to know._

Steve will never forgive him but who cares? That was a done deal after the Accords, or if Tony’s honest, after Ultron.

“You know what they want?” he asks.

“They haven’t confided their endgame in me,” says Steve, a little wryly, and Tony feels weak with relief, because there is the Steve Rogers he remembers. “They’ve been making a lot of videos. They want me to say I’m Nomad and I’m a lawbreaker.”

He doesn’t, Tony notices, say that he is Nomad. Which—since Tony knows he’s Nomad, and Steve has to know Tony knows because the alternative is Steve thinks Tony’s stupid and Tony’s pretty sure that whatever Steve thinks of him, “stupid” doesn’t feature—means that Steve knows or thinks they’re under surveillance. Good to know.

“Did you say it?”

“Nah,” says Steve, casual.

Tony can picture his face perfectly. _I could do this all day._ “Well I’m going to admit it right away,” he says. “I shouldn’t have been going around the world in a sexy black suit saving people and being a hero, and I’m man enough to say so.”

A laugh bubbles out of Steve, a real one. “God, I miss you.”

Because it’s dark, and Steve is sounding better, Tony admits: “The Tower’s pretty shit without you.”

“Yeah?” says Steve like he doesn’t believe it.

“Yeah.” Tony scootches closer to the wall, trying to alleviate the pain in his shoulders. It rattles the handcuffs, and Steve sucks in a breath. “I got used to having you around.”

Something clangs, down the hall, and Tony’s head jerks up, as if he’s forgotten it’s too dark to see any damn thing. Steve says, “Tony, whatever happens—”

“Shut up,” Tony says, “that’s not what we—shut up, okay, this isn’t a goodbye thing, this isn’t—” and then they’re in the cell with him, too-bright light pouring in from the hallway, four guys with guns and fists and masks.

They march him out of there, which isn’t what he expects. From what Steve said, he thought they’d put on a light, make him watch while they torture Steve in front of him until he does what they want. Instead they march him through some halls, shove him into a cell that looks pretty much exactly like the one he was just in except this one’s got a camera set-up, and break all the fingers on his left hand, one by one. He swears over the first one, his index finger, and then snaps his mouth shut and fucking takes it, because if this is for Steve’s benefit, on closed-circuit televisions or whatever—

(please let it not be)

—he’s not going to make it any harder than it has to be.

They call him “your engineer,” and his hand fucking hurts so fucking much that it’s hard to focus on anything else. They pick up his right hand, and he jerks it back from them, and someone punches him hard in the stomach, doubles him over.

“That all you got?” he says, when he gets his breath back. He’s scared, and he hates being scared. Come right down to it, he doesn’t _need_ his fingers so much as he just _wants_ them, he can get by with shitty fingers. He tries to tell himself this.

“You have twenty-four hours,” says one of them. “We ruin his right hand next.”

When he gets back to his dungeon thing, they’ve put the lights on. He and Steve aren’t in the same cell, they’re in two separate ones, with bars between. Steve isn’t chained, and when they throw Tony back in—he tucks his arm protectively and takes the impact on his shoulder rather than trying to catch himself on the bad hand—they don’t chain him up either.

“You fucks,” Steve yells, slamming his hands against the bars on his side. “He needs some fucking medical care, you sacks of shit, you worthless fucking assholes—”

If anything could save this day, it is Steve Rogers using all the cuss words he knows. “Cocksuckers,” Tony suggests.

The doors clang shut behind his captors, and Steve quits yelling, leans tiredly on the bars. “That’d be the pot calling the kettle black a little bit, wouldn’t it?” he says.

Tony laughs, and hisses. “Don’t make me laugh, Cap, I’m working with bruised ribs here. Was that for your benefit, the—” He raises his fucked-up hand.

“Hell,” says Steve. He sounds bad, but he looks okay. If they’ve been beating up on him, it’s got to be a few days past, long enough that there’s no marks on him now, or none that Tony can see. “You need to wrap those, you need—”

“Vicodin?” Tony suggests, crawling over to the wall where he was cuffed before and propping his back against it, so he can see Steve. Fuck, his hand hurts. “I’m—I’ve got an undershirt, I’ll deal with it in—just give me a sec, okay.”

“No,” says Steve.

Tony glances up at him quizzically.

“The—for my benefit thing. I don’t think it was. It’s for the State Department, I think. I’m the carrot, I think you’re supposed to be the stick. Cooperate and you get your fugitive, don’t cooperate and you lose your weapons guy. Kind of thing. I don’t know what they’re asking for in exchange, though.”

“Weapons guy,” says Tony. Well, fine. That’s what he is, isn’t it? No matter what he fucking does, that’s where he always lands. Stark Industries, the suits, Ultron, the Avengers. Weapons guy. Fuck.

Steve visibly registers the flatness in his tone, and opens his mouth.

“Don’t bother. Not like I don’t know what you think of me.” Jesus fucking fuck, his hand hurts. “Okay, I’m taking off my shirt, fair warning if it’s going to make you blush.”

The buttons are too hard to do one-handed—firm fucking buttonholes, he’s got here—and he doesn’t want Steve watching him fumble them, so he pops them off. There’s nothing he can do about the cuff button on his right hand, honestly, so that’ll be a fucking lesson to him, wearing a real shirt. Anyway, he can work around it. He gets his undershirt off clumsily, shrugs his now-buttonless shirt back on, and wraps his hand up untidily in the undershirt.

“No, Tony, look, you need to tear it into strips,” Steve says, reaching out like he’s going to do something about it. He can just about fit two fingers through the bar, about to the second knuckle. Helpful. “Strips, and then—do your thumb first, and then two fingers, and two fingers—”

He’s not good at being in pain. “I can’t.”

“You have to. Your fingers—”

“I said I can’t! Fuck! I’m a _weapons guy,_ remember? I’m not a fucking medic.”

Steve falls silent. Tony stares at the white cloth lump of his hand, which doesn’t feel any better at all and won’t stay because he doesn’t have any pins or anything to hold it together. He looks at it because he doesn’t want to look at Steve.

Steve says, “Would you rather be a weapon?” and there’s a catch in his voice that makes Tony look up, after all. Steve’s chest is rising and falling quick, and he looks, he looks, why does he have to look so fucking frayed? Why can’t he be the unbeatable pillar of a man he’s always been?

“You’re not a weapon,” says Tony quietly.

Steve leans his head forward, into the bars of his side of the cell. “Since they put me in that chamber I’ve never been anything else.”

“We both know that’s bullshit. You—”

“For God’s sake, Tony,” says Steve, and takes off his shirt.

“Wow. Hey, not that I’m complaining, Cap, but—whoa! Hey!” This is because Steve’s started ripping his shirt apart, tearing at it with teeth and fingers. He looks like he’s just lost his mind, which as far as Tony’s concerned is pretty likely. Being in captivity isn’t something either of them handles well.

“Here.” Steve threads a strip of shirt through the bars of their shared cell. “Start with your thumb. Tuck the end in.”

Tony stays where he is. “Quit it.”

“No,” says Steve. “I’m not going to stand here and watch you—just take the damn strips and wrap your damn thumb.” He says it in his Captain America voice, and even for as much as Tony’s head aches and his hand hurts like fuck, Steve’s Captain America voice is still really sexy.

Still. Not good to let Steve have everything his own way. “Are these weaponized shirt strips?”

“Wrap your thumb, please.”

“No, I’m, for my own safety, I’d like to know, since you’re such an unstoppable weapon and all, do I need to be worried about this? Cause, I mean, if you were more than a weapon, that’d be one thing, but if you honestly are _only_ a weapon, I simply do not feel sanguine accepting medical advice from you.”

Steve knows exactly what he’s doing. “If I say I’m not just a weapon will you wrap your hand?”

“Yep.” Tony bounces to his feet, hides a wince, and trots over to the barred side of his cell.

“Okay, I’m not. Take this, please.”

Tony accepts the strip of shirt and tries not to stare too openly at Steve’s chest. He dangles the cloth between two fingers on his right hand (he does not think about what they’ll do to that hand, twenty-four hours from now) and says, in his most didactic voice, “I am so much more than a weapon.”

Steve’s eyes snap up to Tony’s. They’re suspiciously bright, and hey, great, that’s something to add to the Special Skills section of his resume, making Captain America cry. “Quit it.”

“You quit it,” Tony barks at him. “Christ, like being tortured isn’t enough, now you’re coming at me with this self-esteem crisis. The fuck do you mean you’re nothing but a weapon?”

Steve’s got one arm crossed over his chest, fingers digging protectively into his shoulder. He looks hunched and small. “Tell me it’s not true.”

“It’s not true.”

“God, Tony, you _know_ I’m— Just— I don’t have—Do what you want,” Steve says. He shoves the rest of the strips he’s torn off of his shirt through the bars at Tony and retreats to the corner of his cell, drawing his legs up to his chin and resting his head on his knees.

Too far, then. “Steve. Hey. Steve.”

But Steve shuts his eyes and doesn’t answer. Tony feels like shit but what else is new? He wraps his hand because he has nothing else to do and the shirt’s already torn into strips, so it’d be a waste not to use them. He’s clumsy, doing it one-handed, has to use his teeth to tie the knots, but it does help, with the pain.

He tries a few more times to talk to Steve, lighter topics, but Steve keeps giving him wan and miserable smiles and telling him he should try to get some sleep, which means, in Steve-Rogers-Polite-Jargon, “shut up and leave me alone please.” So Tony lies down and shuts his eyes and waits.

***

Of course it’s Steve who gets them out in the end. They haul him away the next morning for more independent film-making, and then there’s a clamor of the type that Tony has long since learned to recognize, and feet pounding, keys clinking, two guys in the cell with Tony grabbing for him—ah, the joys of being a hostage—but Steve’s beyond negotiation. He’s right behind them, a whirlwind of supersoldier; he growls and throws one of them and Tony hears the crunch of bone, Jesus fuck it is too early for this, then snaps the other one’s neck like it’s nothing.

He’s not even breathing hard.

It’s easy after that, except that Steve’s eyes are wild and Tony doesn’t think he’s ever seen him like this. They take the guns off the two guys in Tony’s cell, and it’s not hard to find where they stashed Tony’s stuff.

The suit’s still adapted for Steve to hang onto it. Tony sees Steve register surprise. Normally he’d say something snarky, tell Steve not to read into it, but Steve is vivid with misery, and Tony can’t bring himself to say anything that might make it worse. “Where do you want me to drop you, Cap?” he says, once they’re up and away.

Steve doesn’t answer, either because he can’t hear him while they’re in the air, or because he’s legitimately in some kind of fugue state, but either way he’s scaring the fuck out of Tony, so Tony decides to say fuck it and take them both back to his place. It’s a flat in Kensington Gardens, and there’s roof access.

The flat hasn’t been shaken down, as far as Tony can tell. Good enough. Steve looks like he’s on the verge of collapse, but of course the first thing out of his mouth once Tony gets the suit off is “Are you okay?”

Tony makes himself speak gently. “Yeah, yeah, I’m great, I’m good. Hey, thank you, okay? Pretty sure they’d have gone for my eyes next, so—”

Like he can’t help himself, Steve touches Tony’s face, just under his right eye. Tony closes his eyes, and Steve’s finger slides across his cheek, just barely brushing his eyelashes. “That wouldn’t happen. I wouldn’t let them do that to you.” He swallows hard and turns away. “I’m—I should go, I—this isn’t, the Accords, I’m—”

“Wow,” says Tony. “I’m marveling at what a terrible idea that is. You’re, Steve, come on, you’re obviously really fucked up right now, you need to sleep, get a shower—”

Steve’s jaw sets. “I’m fine.”

Ah. “Do, um.” Tony ducks his head artfully. “Do you think you maybe could help me out with my hand before—”

“Oh,” says Steve, miserable again. “Yeah, I’m, I’m sorry, hell, Tony, of course.”

He takes a shower while Steve runs to the nearest Boots for bandages, splints, and ibuprofen, and after Steve splints his fingers and they argue for fifteen minutes over whether further medical attention is required, he talks Steve into having a shower before he heads out; and after _that_ he sags wearily against the door jamb and asks like he’s ashamed to say it if Steve wouldn’t mind staying the night.

He wakes up at two AM because Steve’s standing in the door of his bedroom. “Hey,” he says, groggy.

“Sorry,” Steve says. The light from the hall is behind him, and he casts a long shadow across Tony’s bed. “Sorry, just—”

“No, no, that’s—that’s okay,” and seriously, Steve’s scaring the living hell out of him, this wavery disconnected thing he’s got going on, so Tony adds, “Hey, what is this?”

“I wouldn’t let them,” Steve whispers. “Your eyes, I wouldn’t—”

“When was the last time you slept?” Tony says, sharply. “You get any sleep while you were there, that whole week, did you sleep?”

Steve shakes his head slightly.

“Jesus, Steve. Come here.”

He expects Steve to balk, and he kind of expects _himself_ to balk, but neither of them does: Steve crawls into the bed and lies down on his side, facing Tony. “You need your eyes,” Steve says, and he’s shaking.

He’s shaking, and he’s so close and he’s _warm._ So maybe Rhodey’s a little bit right, maybe Tony’s a little in love, but come on: He defies anyone with a soul to see Steve like this, wrecked from guilt and exhaustion and the weight of the world on his shoulders, and not press closer to him, put an arm around him, hold him until he falls asleep.


	3. Receiving Gifts

He doesn’t give a shit about Bucky Barnes’s fucking _happiness,_ okay, that’s not what this is. As far as he’s concerned, the Winter Soldier can rot in cryofreeze until a meteor strikes the earth and starts the evolutionary process over from scratch. Not like it would help. Not like Tony doesn’t see the whole video playing over and over again in his head when he’s trying to fall asleep, no matter what he does.

But.

But: He wants to send Steve’s shield back to him. Maybe with a note that says he was wrong to say it didn’t belong to Steve. Maybe to say it’s Steve’s choice who he wants to be, but what Tony sees in him, has always known about him, is that he’s a fucking superhero, and superheroes protect people, and that’s what the shield is for.

(Superhero, not hero. That’s how he saves it from being disgustingly sentimental.)

He wants to send Steve’s shield back to him, and he wants it to be a surprise, only he doesn’t know where to find Steve. He only knows that eventually, Steve’ll find his way back to Wakanda, because that’s where Bucky Barnes is, Steve’s North Star. 

(Tony’s not bitter.)

If he sends the shield to Wakanda, it’ll be like a threat. Like: I know where the bodies are buried, Steve Rogers. Like: You have no secrets from me.

So it has to go in this order. First, he has to give Bucky Barnes back to Steve. Then the shield. Then the metaphorical Captain America mantle (optional).

Bucky Barnes has racked up a body count, sure, but he’s also been tortured and brainwashed, and there’s video of a lot of it, buried deep in the Hydra files Nat released. What they did to Barnes any time he expressed doubts is—not fun to watch. Tony watches it anyway. He’s watched his parents’ murder, not like anything’s ever going to be worse than that.

He hires a PR team and gets the ball rolling. There’s a photograph of Bucky and Howard together, young and handsome. Tony lets the press have it, and follows it up with a GQ profile where he opens up about his recent kidnapping (Ross is blaming Hydra, and that’s convenient enough for Tony’s purposes that he doesn’t question it) and his parents’ death. He makes it good. How in the wake of the Sokovia Accords, he realized that he couldn’t rest until he understood what had happened to his mother, and why. He gives them the tape he’d watched of Bucky Barnes, what was done to him.

He wipes away a single tear with the flat of his hand. The GQ writer mentions that, of course, it’s too fucking good not to, and then it’s off to the races, who can dig through the Hydra files and find the worst thing they did to Barnes. It’s nothing the world doesn’t already know in the abstract, but the details hurt.

T’Challa calls. Wants to know what Tony’s up to, what this is.

(How he has the bandwidth, and the grace, to give a damn about Bucky Barnes, Tony has no fucking idea.)

Tony says, “It’ll kill Steve if he doesn’t—” and unexpectedly chokes up.

“I believe,” says T’Challa, “that he thinks it will kill Steve to have him alive. If you wish to argue him out of the decision—”

And okay, yeah, it was definitely not on his to-do list for the year to go talk a brainwashed former assassin into coming out of retirement as part of an ass-backward plan to cheer up Steve Rogers. He can hear how crazy the idea sounds, and it should be enough to stop him, except that he can also see the silhouette of Steve in the bedroom door at his London flat, uncertainty in every line of him. It wasn’t enough for Steve to fight. He had to know, he _had_ to, what he was fighting for, and for Bucky Barnes he’d fight to the end of the world.

“This is weird,” Rhodey tells him.

“Just being a friend,” he says.

“You ever think it’s maybe not Bucky he’s missing?”

“Well, if it’s America—” Tony trails off. He thinks he can figure out America too, eventually.

One thing at a time. He flies out to Wakanda, just him, in the suit, cloaked, so nobody’ll know where he’s headed and ask awkward questions. He brings some really amazing Scotch for T’Challa, and T’Challa wakes Bucky up for him.

“Steve?” Bucky asks, desperate. As soon as his eyes are open, that’s what he asks. A real fucking love for the ages, these two.

“Steve is well,” says T’Challa, “and Tony Stark is here in friendship.”

“Steve’s completely fucked up over you going down for a cryofreeze nap without an expiration date on it,” Tony says, “and I don’t personally give a damn if the Dora Milaje put your head on a spike, so I think ‘well’ and ‘friendship’ are both a stretch.”

The way Bucky’s jaw sets into stubborn lines reminds Tony so much of Steve that it aches. “I’m not staying up here for someone to use me again.”

“Great. I’m not waking you up for that, either. We’re going to fix you up with some solid science and send you back to Steve.”

Bucky considers this. He puts his head to one side and asks, “And Sam?”

“Sure,” Tony agrees.

“No,” says Bucky.

“Okay, not Sam then.”

Bucky huffs a laugh. “I meant no to the science. I don’t trust you.”

“Fantastic,” says Tony, “because I don’t trust you either, and I’ve built some phenomenal restraints for you at the Tower. Hydra zapped this shit into your brain and I’m going to zap it right the fuck back out.”

“You hate me,” Bucky says, rolling his shoulders back.

Honestly? Tony’s not even sure he does, anymore. Not after what he’s seen. But he says, “It’s not for you, Barnes. Steve’s—” He thinks of Steve folded in on himself in their cell. Steve’s fingers ghosting over Tony’s cheek. The crunch of a man’s skull against metal bars. He doesn’t know how to describe what Steve is, without Bucky.

When he looks up, Bucky’s face has softened perceptibly. “He’s doing that bad, huh?” he says.

And it’s stupid, but Tony feels like a weight has been lifted off of him, just, _fuck_ to have someone else know, someone else who can see it. He says, his voice cracks but he still says, “Really really really bad,” and Bucky weirdly puts his hand on Tony’s shoulder and Tony doesn’t shove him away.

***

The one good thing about the Avengers being scattered to the winds is that there’s nobody in the Tower to give Tony lip about bringing Bucky Barnes home with him. Jarvis—Vision takes it serenely in stride, Bruce is out doing whatever Bruce does, and Natasha hasn’t been home in a while.

Tony explains the basics of how BARF works and runs through the demonstration video with him. Yeah, it’s his parents on their last day, the last day before Bucky, the Winter Soldier, murdered them. Fucking tough shit. If Barnes minds seeing their faces then—

“I’m sorry,” Bucky says.

Tony glances over from his controls, surprised. “What?”

“That I killed them. I’m—you know. Sorry.” He shrugs one shoulder and looks down and away.

He wishes Steve were here. He shuts his hands into fists and says, “I know what they did to you. Hydra.”

Bucky doesn’t look at him.

“Mainly just glad to have someone in the Tower who’s more fucked up than I am, is what I’m saying. So shut up and play with the machine. If you’re worried about snapping, chain yourself up. We’ll just—get your brain all patched up and back to Steve.” Tony exhales hard. He’s so fucking bad at this.

Bucky mutters something.

“What?”

“I said who’s patching up your brain?”

Tony rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I’m doing fine, tiger, thanks for the—”

“No,” Bucky says, more forceful. He’s got a very thoughtful face on him, which if he’s anything like Steve, bodes really fucking ill. “I’m not gonna do it. I changed my mind.”

“What,” says Tony. “Wait, no, come on, that’s the whole point, that’s why we got you out of Wakanda, is so I could fix you up and give you back.”

Bucky scrunches up his mouth. “I don’t trust you. I want to talk to Steve.”

Tony stares at him, and Bucky stares right back. Tony says, “What changed?”

Bucky shrugs.

“Barnes.”

“I wanna talk to Steve. Get him on the phone, I wanna talk to him. He should be here if we’re doing this. Gotta have another supersoldier here in case I—” Bucky holds up a fist and explodes his fingers. “Yeah. Yeah yeah. Gotta have him here. And Sam. Call him to come home.”

“He—” Tony pinches the bridge of his nose. “Were you not around for the whole clusterfuck with the Accords? Even if they gave him amnesty or any shit like that, he can’t do the hero thing while he’s in the States. You want to try and stop him from charging off when someone attacks New York and—”

“Okay,” says Bucky. “I’m going home then.”

They get into another staring contest, and Tony gives up because he gets bored of waiting for Bucky to back down. Jesus, you meet one supersoldier, you’ve met them all. A-fucking-pparently. “I will call him,” he says. “But if he says do it then you have to do it, okay? Whether he comes back or not.”

“Okay!” says Bucky, chipper. Chipper is a deeply, _deeply_ weird look on him. Tony gives him a final glare before ducking out to find that dumb fucking flip phone and making the call to Steve.

“Tony?” says Steve’s voice, fearful.

“I’m fine, everyone’s fine,” Tony says, and Jesus, jet lag much?, he nearly calls him _baby._ “I got you something, but it actually needs you back at the Tower. Really demanding birthday present.”

“Did you get a dog?”

Bucky’s followed him out and is leaned up against the doorjamb, one sardonic eyebrow raised. Tony meets his eyes and says, “Yep. Scruffiest fucking puppy you ever saw. Bites like you wouldn’t believe. I need you to come help me out.”

“And Sam,” says Bucky.

On the other end of the phone, Steve sucks in a breath. “Tony?” he says shakily.

Bucky flaps a hand at Tony, so Tony tosses him the phone. “Yeah, hey. S’me. . . . All right, don’t piss your pants, Rogers, it’s not a— Yeah. Steve. Yeah.”

This was the plan, this was the exact fucking plan, was to give Bucky back to Steve, so Tony doesn’t know why the tenderness in Bucky’s voice should draw something taut in his chest. He tries to get Bucky’s attention to ask silently if he should leave the room, but Bucky keeps ignoring him.

“Nah, Tony came and got me.” Bucky flashes a grin at Tony, and Steve’s end of the phone erupts. “Sheesh, tone it down, we didn’t— No, I damn didn’t. What’m I, the—No. No. Nah, look, he looks like shit, I think you need to come back to New York.”

Tony throws up his hands, and Bucky tosses him another grin.

“Yep. Yep. Clinging to the raggedy edge of sanity. You and Wilson better get back here pronto. . . . No, he went to the kitchen.”

“Did not,” Tony mutters.

Bucky gives him the finger. “Cause he thinks I’m jerking you around, is why. . . . Yeah, a little bit, but— Yeah. Yes. I don’t know, buck-sixty-five?” He rolls his eyes at Tony. “What, you want me to pick him up and shake him?”

Even Tony can hear Steve’s sharp “No” to that.

“Christ, you’re stubborn. M’asking you to come home. Your boy Stark looks like shit and _he’s_ asking you to come home, so. Do whatever you want. Bring Sam if you come.” He hangs up and throws the phone back to Tony.

“I don’t look like shit,” Tony says, because he can’t argue with Bucky’s methods, but he feels like arguing. “ _You_ look like shit, did you even shower before we left Wakanda?”

Bucky bunches up his mouth, and Tony realizes, guiltily, that he was keeping it together for Steve, barely. Now that Steve’s off the phone, he’s a live wire of tension. Fuck does Tony know what that feels like, the face you give Steve and everything you keep hidden behind it. He’s not sorry for Bucky. Just. He knows what that feels like.

“Well,” he says, bright. “So yeah, great work with Steve, I’m gonna head out to my lab because frankly I don’t like you very much, Barnes.”

Bucky’s eyes spark and he says, “Mutual, Stark.”

“Great,” says Tony. “Tie yourself up if you’re going to use my machine, Friday’s got it on voice controls and she’ll tranq you if you start—having issues. She can show you where your room’s located, kitchen, whatever.”

“Can I use someone else’s?” Bucky asks. “If I want, for now?”

“What, room?”

Bucky ducks his head so his hair falls into his face, and his “yeah” is barely audible. Tony doesn’t doesn’t _doesn’t_ feel sorry for him. He’d sleep in Steve’s room, too, if—

Whatever. He gets it.

“Sure,” he says. “Don’t trash anything.”


	4. Acts of Service

Tony’s not going to pretend it’s not weird having Sam and Steve back, having Bucky in the Tower for what seems like the long haul. Every morning Bucky and Steve are downstairs with the memory machine, and Sam goes flying because he can’t take being cooped up, and Tony tries to figure out how to get the three of them legal again.

The thing is that maybe Tony could get the charges against them dropped, maybe. Definitely he could ensure that Sam would get charged as a civilian if he’s going to get charged at all, given that he doesn’t have superpowers, just army-issue weaponry. But none of that helps a damn bit given that as soon as something comes up where Steve thinks he can save the day, he and Sam and Bucky are going to run right out and break the law again.

Anyway, between the legal thing and running Stark Industries and being one of only four usable legal Avengers (of which one is Bruce and one is Thor and they’re both prone to taking off on vision quests at a moment’s notice) and working on plans for a new arm for when Bucky stabilizes, Tony doesn’t have a lot of time for team bonding. So having Sam and Steve back is weird but—controllably weird.

The weirdest thing is that he ends up seeing a lot of Bucky, because Bucky’s up when he is, wandering the kitchen at three in the morning scrounging for leftovers. They don’t talk about anything that matters, which is to say, they don’t talk about Steve. Actually, that’s the weirdest thing, how they can share a sun, and never say a word about him.

Bucky talks a lot about Sam instead. What foods Sam wants him to try, fighting styles Sam’s been trying out in sparring sessions, missions Sam went on before they landed back in New York. It’s like Bucky’s figured out one Tony-Stark-safe topic and can’t let go of it.

“You think he’d help me with,” says Bucky one night, and gets stuck.

“Your dick?” says Tony, cause he’s drunk and that’s funny, but then Bucky blushes bright red, which makes it even better.

“Shut up, man. The—no. Quit it! This is—I wanna—”

Tony gets his face under control. “Okay, what? Sorry.”

“Uh,” says Bucky. “The, the, the, the memory thing, do you think he. Maybe that. Fuck, this is stupid.”

Actually, the weirdest thing is the way Tony keeps having weird little spasms of pity for Bucky Barnes. It’s a reflex, nothing of substance, just when he sees Bucky do and say stuff that he’s done and said himself when things are bad, he has some kind of—it’s a mirror neuron thing, he thinks probably. “No, hey, I’m sorry I was—helped how?”

Bucky looks at his hands. “It’s not so good when Steve—”

(They don’t talk about Steve.)

“It’s not so good,” Bucky says, emending it, “when—the projector. You know. It can get hard to watch. And, cause when I’m trying to. When I—see, they made the asset say ‘Ready to comply’ when—and it’s, I guess, not, when I remember, when the asset—” He grinds to a halt.

Tony gets the gist. He means, and isn’t saying, that Steve is handling it badly, the memory stuff. Must be harder for him, when it’s Bucky.

It’s not important but there was just one time, there was this one time, and he remembers it so very fucking well, they were in the tower and something just—

Something smelled like ozone, and—

Steve dropped a plate, getting to him. Tony heard it shatter on the tile, but Steve didn’t even turn his head to see. He said, “Hey, it’s okay, you’re here, you’re here, you’re here,” and he rubbed circles in Tony’s shoulder blades until Tony’s breathing steadied.

But it’s different, of course, when it’s Bucky. Bucky is Steve’s beating heart. Not surprising Steve can’t respond the same way, when it’s someone who really matters to him.

Tony is so fucking pathetic.

“Sam would help you,” he says. “If you asked him, I bet he would.”

Bucky’s making puppy-dog eyes at him.

“What?” says Tony.

“Uh. Could you ask him maybe?”

When— _when_ —did this become his life? Tony scowls and opens his mouth to say no, but Bucky preempts him. “I asked Steve to come back for you. You owe me.”

“Excuse me, I do not _owe_ you. I woke your sorry ass up out of cryofreeze, I’m maybe three-quarters of the way to getting you amnesty for your series of frankly fairly horrific crimes against humanity—”

“They’re not crimes against humanity unless—”

“—and, _and_ I hooked you up with a staggeringly great memory corrective virtual reality system not available to the general public, and you think I owe you?”

“You owe me,” Bucky says, so fucking sure of himself, “cause you need Steve, and I got him back here for you.”

“I don’t need Steve,” says Tony. He tries to say it. He finds himself lost for breath, trying. Bucky’s watching him like a hawk, like an assassin, all scruffy beard and knowing eyes, and Tony hates him for being able to see it. Finally he says, “Does Steve know?”

Bucky stretches out a hand and pulls a grape off the bunch on the counter. “Steve,” he says, around a mouthful of grape, “doesn’t pay good attention. S’cause he feels too guilty, he can’t look at you any other way. Can you ask Sam for me please?”

Sam says they’re supposed to be encouraging prosocial behaviors like saying please, so Tony agrees, and also because he knows if he doesn’t, Barnes is liable to run right off to Steve and say _Stark has a crush on you_ and then Tony would have to put himself in cryofreeze to escape the resulting humiliation.

That night in London, he didn’t sleep. Steve cuddled into Tony’s chest with one hand hooked into the neckline of his shirt, and Tony shut his eyes and thought about Steve’s knuckles against his skin. He thought about how fragile Steve had sounded, when he thought Tony was unconscious or dead, back in the dungeon. If he wanted to, it would be easy, Tony thought how easy it would be to kiss Steve awake, press a thigh between his legs until he gasped, play his body like the perfect fucking instrument it was, live forever on the sounds he would make when he came with his dick in Tony’s mouth. Tony couldn’t sleep, for thinking about that.

Exhibit A in the museum of reasons he wasn’t good enough for Captain Fucking America. Steve had never wanted him when he was in his right mind and Tony wasn’t going to take advantage of him now that he was scared and sad and lonely.

It was a close thing, though. That night in London.

Truth be told, if Tony hadn’t known damn good and well that Steve would have been thinking of Bucky Barnes the whole time, he’d probably have given it a try.

Exhibit B in the museum.

Luckily, it’s easy to ask Sam to help Bucky with the thing—Sam kind of lights up when Tony raises it with him—and that buys him Barnes’s silence and they can stick with this new normal they’ve established. This deeply fucking weird new normal. Sometimes Tony even forgets anything’s different, and then he’ll run into Steve (briefly) in the kitchen or one of the dens and it’ll be like a jolt of electricity straight to his heart.

Which isn’t fair. He fixed this, and it isn’t fair that it won’t stay fixed. Steve’s big sad blue fucking eyes follow him like a wounded puppy dog when Tony makes his excuses and leaves him alone with Bucky.

After Sam’s pardon comes through, Tony starts finding hot coffee made fresh every morning when he gets up. He catches Sam in the gym one day to thank him.

Sam looks at him like he’s got three heads. “That’s Steve.”

“Oh,” Tony says.

Oh.

Tell the truth and shame the devil, Ana Jarvis used to say to him.

The truth is that he misses Steve like someone’s punched a hole straight through him. Flopping comfortably in one of the dens, Steve’s long legs propped up on the arm of a sofa, his reluctant smile when he thought Tony was being a brat. Asking about each other’s days. Bickering over how long you could still eat leftovers. Tony can live without Steve fighting by his side—literally, ha ha ha—but it’s a knife to the gut not having him as a friend.

On a Wednesday, Tony comes upstairs, bleary-eyed, a late night of working, and it turns out that it’s so late it’s early, which means he catches Steve coming back from his morning run.

(Pretty much the worst time to catch Steve. Out of breath, and in a good mood from getting away with being out in public, and his stupid fucking shirt clinging to his abs.)

“Hey!” says Steve, purely and obviously delighted.

Tony smiles back at him, because nobody could not smile back at him. “Hey,” he says.

“Are—are you—wow, it’s good to see you, it seems like I haven’t seen you in a while, huh?”

“Yeah,” Tony says. “I’m, you know. It’s busy.”

“Oh, yeah,” Steve agrees. His smile is fading a little, already. Tony does that to him, makes him sad, ruins his day, it’s like magic how fast it happens. “You, um, yeah, the company, and, and the Avengers.”

“Yeah.”

They stand there for a few seconds, awkwardly, hoping something will change and save them from this dumb fucking conversation. If Tony needed a reminder that they’re not friends anymore, this would do it in spades. Since he doesn’t need the goddamn reminder, it feels like an ugly trick for the universe to pull on him.

“Thanks for the coffee,” he says finally.

Steve glances over at the coffee machine. “I didn’t—”

“No, I mean—” (Christ, it’s hard to believe they were ever capable of having a conversation, the way this is going.) “Uh, you know. When I get up, there’s always—Sam said you’ve been making me coffee in the morning. So. That’s nice. Thanks.”

“It’s.” Steve’s voice is pitched lower, and it’s idiotically sexy. “Well, it’s the least I can do, Tony. After everything.”

Yeah, after everything. That’s a thread Tony doesn’t want to pull on. His eyes are fixed on Steve’s hands. He can remember, every atom of him can exactly remember what it felt like when Steve touched him in London. _I wouldn’t let them do that to you._

Carefully casual, Tony leans onto the counter and tilts his face up to Steve. “You doing okay, Rogers? Anything I can help out with, make your stay more comfortable? Foods you’d like, books, hookers?”

There’s an uncertain hunch to Steve’s shoulders, now. “You know I don’t—”

“Oh, relax, it was a joke.” This is right, Tony’s pretty sure. How it was in the old days. He poked and teased, and Steve let himself be teased. “We all know you’re a celibate old grandpa, there’s no judgment here. Just, you know, let me know if there’s any needs that aren’t being met. That’s what I’m here for, right? Your humble host.”

Steve flinches back from Tony like he’s poison. Too late, Tony realizes what his words sounded like, like, like he was _propositioning_ Steve, or, God, offering himself, _fuck,_ he’s such a fuck-up.

“Not like that,” Tony says hastily.

“I get it.” Steve’s jaw clenches tight around the words.

“No, I—see, the way I said it, it sounded like I meant I wanted to, um—but that’s not what I meant! I was just, it was a joke, I was just doing—ugh.” He buried his face in his arms.

“No, I get it,” says Steve. “It’s a joke, I got it.”

Tony tilts his head back up, almost hopeful that this can be salvaged. Okay, sure, he can go with this. It wasn’t the joke he was trying to make—he’d been trying to make more sort of a procurer joke, which actually is worse possibly? than actually offering himself for any needs of Steve’s that aren’t being met—but fine, yeah, he can go with that. “Yeah, you know, you scratch my back with the coffee—”

Steve is nodding a lot. Nod nod nod nod nod really fast. Not a great sign probably. “I got it,” he says. “Yeah. Okay. I—it’s funny. Um. You should—I should get upstairs. Have a shower.” He turns bright red after saying the word shower and leaves the kitchen without meeting Tony’s eyes.

The next morning, there’s hot coffee waiting in the kitchen.


	5. Physical Touch

The idea for a Winter Soldier drill comes, of course, from Bucky. If anyone else proposed it, Tony would have maybe called them a psychopath while Steve was listening and then quietly ushered them down to the lab to have a look at the plans he’d laid out for that eventuality. Couldn’t be too prepared, if you had a brainwashed assassin living under your roof.

“I’ll play Winter Soldier,” Bucky says.

Bruce has been excused on account of it’s not a good idea to rile up the other guy unnecessarily or give him the idea that Bucky’s an enemy. Vision’s out of the country—visiting Wanda, Tony’s not stupid—which means Sam and Steve and Tony and Bucky are the entirety of this idiot drill.

“I have shit to do,” grumbles Tony.

Sam says, “More important shit than confirming the security of the Avengers premises?”

Tony’s eyes meet Steve’s, and Steve shrugs the way he does when he’s playing innocent: eyebrows, shoulders, hands. Tony throws up his own hands in defeat. “Fine,” he says. “ _Fine,_ but you are not going down in my lab, Barnes, you hear me?”

Bucky squinches up his face. “Shouldn’t have said that. The Winter Soldier knows everything I know, so I mean—if it’s going to be a realistic drill, the asset knows now that the lab’s the most important thing for you. So what you actually just said is, Go downstairs and fuck up my lab, please, Sergeant Barnes.”

Steve makes a soft noise, and everyone looks at him. His eyes are very bright.

“What,” says Bucky.

“It’s.” Steve gives him a watery smile. “You sound like—you sound like you.”

Tony wants to hug him while also punching Bucky to keep him away from the lab. “No lab stuff,” he says. “Or I’m not participating. And Barnes buys me takeout when we’re done.”

“You pay my credit card,” Bucky points out.

“Well.”

The game is that they’ll start at night. Bucky isn’t going to tell them what night it’s scheduled for, so Tony steps up his monitoring. He gets a ping from Friday any time Bucky speaks in Russian. When Bucky’s downstairs with Sam, Tony opens up the walls in Bucky’s room and reinforces them for lockdown. One word from Tony anywhere in the Tower, and the whole system becomes one big scan for Bucky’s face and fingerprints. He’s got a separate suit prepped to lock itself onto Bucky and then shut down, which should immobilize him; if that doesn’t work, if the suit moves when it shouldn’t, it sends a distress call that locks the front doors of the Tower, and that tower could withstand nuclear war. There’s an escape password that he tells to Steve and Sam.

Foolproof.

Except Bucky decides to start the thing at eleven in the morning when Steve and Tony are in the elevator heading downstairs for a meeting with one of Tony’s many attorneys. The elevator touches down, and the doors start to open, and then the whole thing loses power.

“Whoa,” says Steve.

“Friday?”

No answer.

“Oh, this must be—”

“Friday,” Tony repeats, firmly.

She doesn’t answer, and Tony’s starting, a little bit, to panic. “Must be what?” he says, to Steve.

Steve rubs the side of his thumb down his jawline. “Uh. Bucky said there might be, uh, an elevator thing. You know. The drill.”

Cocking his head, Tony swings around to face Steve. “Bucky said there might be an elevator thing.”

“Yeah?” Steve looks innocent in the way that only Steve can.

“Care to expand on that, soldier?”

Steve shivers slightly, which is really fucking distracting. “Uh. He said, um, he said you and I needed. To talk. And so. Um. He said he’d, he and Sam would maybe. Um.”

“I can kill you very easily,” Tony said. He couldn’t actually, because Friday offline meant the suit was offline, but the point needed to be made.

“You.” Steve is closer than, Steve is, Steve, fuck. Tony risks a glance at him, and Steve is looking at Tony, not glancing, really looking. “What,” Tony says.

“Why are you avoiding me?” Steve asks.

Tony gets out a laugh. He thinks it sounds normal. “Avoiding you? I’m not.”

“Are you,” says Steve, thoughtful, “is that, is the idea that you’ll say I’m not and I’ll be too embarrassed to keep asking about it? Or are you just trying to convince yourself, or what?”

See. This is exactly why Tony avoids Steve. “Friday, I want the elevator back up and running right the fuck now. First fucking law of robotics.”

Steve leans into the corner of the elevator, slides down the wall so he’s sitting, his wrists resting on his knees. The lines of him remind Tony of when they were prisoners together. Steve killed two men for touching Tony.

(That wasn’t why he killed them. But they did put their hands on Tony, to hurt him, and seconds later Steve killed them. It’s correlation, not causation.)

“I really miss you,” Steve says.

Tony turns around, and Steve looks up at him, all honest blue eyes. “I’m right here,” Tony says. “We live in the same place, Cap. You could come down to the lab any time.”

(Steve used to come down. He would bring food, because he knew Tony always forgot to eat, when he was deep into his work. He would hitch himself up onto whatever table Tony was using for a work surface, and refuse to move until Tony ate something.)

“I can’t,” Steve says. “The controls, it’s locked. You, you. You blocked me out.”

“Oh.” Yeah, he’d done that, hadn’t he? When he got home from Russia. When he couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe through his anger. It was easy to be angry at Captain America, that locked jaw and the cowl over his face, the memory of his shield coming down. Harder to be angry at Steve, who he’d held in his arms. “I can put it back.”

Steve put his head down on his arms. “I wouldn’t come, anyway.”

“Ouch,” said Tony, laughing to cover how much that— _ouch._

“Because you don’t want me,” said Steve, his words slightly muffled by his knuckles.

This elevator stranding got better and better, didn’t it? Now, a fun new opportunity to assure Steve that he wanted him in the lab, while jumping any possible alternate meanings of the word _want._ Defeated by the concept, Tony went with distraction. He sat down next to Steve, his left shoulder not quite brushing Steve’s right elbow.

“I don’t let people into my lab unless I want them there,” he says. It isn’t enough. Steve doesn’t lift his head, and it’s probably Tony’s imagination that he sways a little bit so more of his arm is pressed up against Tony’s.

“Why’d you bring Bucky back?” Steve asks.

Tony swallows and tells the truth. “I—for you. You scared me, in London, and I thought if I could fix Bucky up and get him back to you—” He makes his hands do the shape of a blossoming flower. Poof. Mental health, served fresh.

“I scared you.” Steve’s voice is perfectly flat.

“A lot,” says Tony honestly. He can’t stop thinking of Steve’s voice, wavery and uncertain, and his fingers on Tony’s cheek.

Steve sounds impossibly sad. “I’m sorry. I’m. I wouldn’t—I wouldn’t hurt you. I’d never.”

That wasn’t how Tony meant it, when he said scared, but _I wouldn’t hurt you,_ from Steve, after Russia, feels like salt in a still-fresh wound.

“I know how that sounds,” Steve says.

“Do you?”

“I.” Steve’s voice wobbles. “I always see—I know you thought I was going to kill you. I saw your face, when. I can’t, I see it when I’m, you thought I.”

Finish a sentence, Tony thinks unkindly.

Steve picks up his head. The motion of it reminds Tony of old videos, the smaller Steve, before the serum. The one who could do this all day. “Whatever it takes,” he says. “I’ll do anything you tell me, Tony. I’m not going anywhere. Whatever happens, I’ll—until you trust me again. Or if you never do, if there isn’t anything, then I’ll still, I’m with you, anyway. Either way, I—”

Tony angles himself sideways, his eyes on Steve’s mouth, and Steve’s words sputter out into silence. He has a good mouth, Tony’s always admired his mouth, even when he’s pissed as hell at Steve it’s still, it’s shapely, is that a weird thing to think? Steve’s lips are parted, and although Tony’s not meeting his eyes, he can _feel_ Steve’s eyes on his face, hot and intentional.

I’m going to kiss him, he thinks, as if it’s been in his head all along. The idea rockets through him, coils in his stomach. There is a wondering, young look in Steve’s eyes that Tony has never seen there before, that makes him feel achingly protective. He wants to say, I won’t hurt you either, except he can’t promise that. He always hurts people, even people he kisses, especially people he kisses.

Their mouths are close. They are sharing the same air.

His heart pounding so loudly that he’s sure Steve must be able to hear it, Tony raises his eyes to Steve’s. Their lips brush a little, a little, and a shiver runs down Steve’s body, strong enough to bump his knees against Tony’s.

Tony pulls back. “Okay?” he asks, because he is crazy, because he is, what, trying to give up the best thing that’s ever happened to him?

“Yeah,” says Steve dreamily. He leans forward and kisses Tony again, not quite getting his mouth on the first time because his eyes are closed, still. Fuck, he’s sweet, the slow hypnotizing way he tastes Tony’s tongue, how he slides their lips apart and tilts his head for a better angle before coming back again. He’s so much fucking sweeter than Tony would have imagined, if he’d ever dared let himself imagine this.

(Occasionally, guilty, he’s imagined sex with Steve, but there’s never been kissing. His imagination wouldn’t stretch to it.)

They separate, and Tony opens his mouth for Steve’s tongue. Steve makes a soft, needy noise in the back of his throat, and fuck, Tony needs more of him, all of him. He tips himself forward, off balance, so that Steve has to open his arms up and catch him, an awkward tangle of limbs, so Tony’s sprawled half across Steve’s lap and propped up by the wall of the escalator. Losing Steve’s mouth for a second, he tips his head back invitingly, and Steve takes the hint and kisses down the line of his jaw.

“God that feels good, that feels so fucking good, Steve, Jesus fuck,” he babbles. Steve says “hm” against his throat and licks there, carefully. Every touch, every movement like he thinks Tony’s going to run. It’s unbearably good, and Steve’s got one hand at the back of Tony’s neck and one braced on his chest, and the one on his chest keeps dipping lower. Tony moans Steve’s name and arches up a little, to make Steve’s hand slip down to his stomach.

“Is this,” whispers Steve.

“ _Yes,_ Tony hisses at him. “Please. Please, please.”

“You can tell me what,” Steve says, and stops. He’s kind of addressing his words to Tony’s collarbone.

“What I want?”

Steve untucks Tony’s shirt in the front. His good shirt, they’re supposed to be meeting with, well, fuck it, here they are, supposed to doesn’t get them anywhere, and Friday isn’t answering, and Steve is playing his fingers over Tony’s abdomen like he’s asking permission for something. The answer’s yes. Of course it’s yes.

Tony unclenches his hand from Steve’s collar, which he doesn’t remember clenching in the first place, that’s Steve’s shirt ruined, and tips Steve’s face up to his. Steve is pink, and won’t meet Tony’s eyes. “Steve,” he says, and he says, “Baby. Look at me.”

Like he’s facing a firing squad, Steve obeys. His fingers are still on Tony’s stomach, dipped just a little into the waistband of his pants. He says, “Baby?”

“Yeah, I mean—” Tony smiles at him, and Steve smiles back. “I figure if I’m going to have my tongue down your throat, I should call you something besides just—” Steve’s fingers slide lower, and Tony gasps “jesusfuckchristinggodsteveplease.”

Steve puffs a tiny laugh into Tony’s face. “You were saying?”

“I absolutely was not saying,” says Tony. “I was saying, I wasn’t saying anything, I was waiting in a, a completely lustful haze for you to keep doing whatever you’re doing—”

“I just.” Steve’s voice drifts slightly abstract, and he is looking at Tony like he wants to eat him up. “I thought about it. Touching you. If I had you, what I’d do to you.”

Tony’s head clunks back against the elevator wall. Captain America talking dirty is nothing he’s ever remotely imagined. The way Steve’s touching him has changed, a little, become more deliberate, moves on a chessboard, with a game plan in mind. He runs a thumb horizontal across Tony’s stomach, just above his belt.

“Fuck,” Tony whispers.

“Take off your tie.”

It’s an order, and Tony hurries to comply. Damn thing gets stuck as he’s yanking it off his head, knotted too tight, and Steve laughs and undoes it for him, then kisses the hollow in Tony’s throat where it was resting a moment before. In the best fucking way, Tony feels like prey. Steve unbuckles his belt, keeping eye contact.

“Sometimes,” he says, sliding the belt free of Tony’s trousers, “I’d come just imagining you taking off your clothes. I’d be that desperate for you.”

“Yeah?” Tony says. He’s good at the yes-and of sex talk, and this is probably the horniest he’s ever been in his life. His dick could cut glass right now, and Steve hasn’t come close to touching him there. “Well, come when you need to, baby, I want to see what your face looks like when that happens, and I know you have—”

Steve shifts slightly.

“Oh wow,” Tony says, because there’s a world of difference between hearing Steve say that he wants him, and feeling the evidence of Steve’s desire hard and insistent against his ass. He wriggles a little, and Steve makes a high, hungry noise. “Fuck you’re pretty,” he says.

Bashfully, Steve’s eyelashes sweep down across his cheek.

“Continue,” Tony says. “You’d come just imagining me taking off my clothes. What else? I hope in these fantasies I was completely overcome with lust to the point that all I could do was go loose and pliant and wait to see what you’d do to me? Cause I’ll be honest, that’s the current situation—oh fucking Christ.”

This is because Steve gives him a predator’s smile and pressed the heel of his hand against Tony’s dick, over his pants. Tony’s back arches hard enough that he bangs his head against the handrail, and Steve starts giggling.

“Stop that,” Tony says, annoyed.

Sex with Steve went much more smoothly in his imagination. There was a bed, for one thing, and Steve didn’t laugh at him, and there wasn’t any head-banging, and there wasn’t the faint smell of chrome from the elevator, and Steve never took Tony’s face between his hands and kissed him sweet and tender. In his imagination when Steve undressed him, he didn’t ball up Tony’s jacket and shirt and put them under his head for a pillow; he didn’t take off his own shirt and lay down on top of Tony, skin to skin, his face against Tony’s shoulder, shaking a little.

So the reality is kind of a lot better than his fantasies.

“You okay?”

“I.” Steve raises his head. “I never thought I’d get to have you like this.”

Tony’s throat closes up, and he closes his arms around Steve, pets through the hair at the nape of his neck. I’m sorry, he thinks. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

After a minute of this, close and warm, Steve props himself up on one arm and looks down at Tony critically. “Is this a dream I’m having?” he says.

Tony rolls his hips up, and Steve gasps. Christ, he’s hard. “If it’s a sex dream,” Tony says, “we should get on with the sex part, no?”

Steve smiles that predatory smile again and lowers his mouth to Tony’s neck, licking and sucking there until Tony’s writhing under him, begging, please please, Steve, please, fuck, God, touch me, please. “Do you like it when,” he says softly, and takes Tony’s right nipple between his teeth.

“Yes, fuck—”

“Mm,” says Steve. He kisses where his teeth were, tortuously slow, until Tony gets impatient and tries to move things along by sliding his hand down the back of Steve’s pants, rubbing his middle finger between the cheeks of Steve’s ass. Steve whispers, _Oh,_ and has Tony’s dick out of his pants in about thirty seconds.

Careful, Steve rolls off of Tony, presses up against his side, and they both look down at Tony’s dick, which is weeping precome. “Can I,” says Steve.

“Finish a sentence,” Tony teases. “Can I touch your cock, Tony. Tony, can I jerk you off, can I jerk off on you, can I paint your chest in my come—”

Steve kisses him fiercely, and maybe it’s to shut him up, but he’s got a hand on Tony’s dick now, jerking him off slow, his thumb rubbing against the head on every upward stroke. He ducks his head to suck on Tony’s nipple at the same time, and it’s such a pretty fucking picture, Steve’s big, callused hand sliding up and down Tony’s cock and his fair head bent over Tony’s chest, hiding the worst of the scars from Tony’s view, that Tony lets his head fall back and gives himself over to it. He’s shaking and arching up for every touch, Steve’s warm mouth and warm hands, Jesus Christ, it’s going to kill him, he’s going to die like this—

“I’m going to come,” he gasps. “I’m going—”

“Good,” Steve says, hot and dark. “Come on my fingers, do it now.”

Tony swears desperately and comes harder than he maybe ever has, thrusting up into the circle of Steve’s hand, wave after wave of it. He’s limp after, dizzy, his ears ringing. It takes a long time for him to recognize that the weight pressing into his shoulder is Steve’s chin; a longer time after that to register that Steve is pressing his mouth into Tony’s skin in an effort not to beam up at him.

“What,” Tony says hazily.

“Nothing.”

The sun god of ancient times must have looked like that when he was pleased with his subjects. Tony’s ears are ringing, and he’s not accountable for his own thoughts. “What?” he insists.

Blushing, Steve rubs his nose against the end of Tony’s collarbone. “I like seeing you like that,” he mumbles. “All—coming apart like that, because of me.”

Tony’s eyes sting, suddenly. He doesn’t know why. He wants to say so many things right now (I liked it too, I missed you, I never imagined you’d want to touch me like this, I missed you I missed you I missed you), and he can’t get any of them out. Everything he can think of to say feels like an admission of defeat, like he’d be giving up what he believes in because Steve’s got good hands. Because Steve’s smiling at him.

_Why did you pull your support of the Accords, Mr. Stark?_

_You have no idea how beautiful Steve Rogers is naked._

The responsibility of it chokes him, and he scrambles backwards, ungainly with his dick still out, his breath suddenly coming too fast. “I can’t,” he gasps. “I can’t, Steve, I can’t.”

Anyone else—literally anyone else in the world—would say something snotty about how convenient it was that he was having second thoughts after he’d gotten his orgasm out of the way. But Steve takes the hit, and it _looks_ like a hit, the way his face keeps trying to arrange itself into passivity, then crumpling. “Okay,” he says. He looks away from Tony’s scrambles to get his clothes back in order. “I—okay. Did I, God, Tony, did I do anything you didn’t want?”

“No,” says Tony, quickly. He’s tucked back into his trousers now, and Steve hands up his undershirt without comment. It’s sticky with come where Steve has used it to wipe off his hand, so Tony finds a clean patch, scrubs at his stomach, and balls it up on the floor.

Steve gives him his shirt. He won’t look at Tony. His shoulders are hunched over, his arms crossed protectively over his bare chest. _I like seeing you like that._ Tony has never been able to bear Steve’s sadness. Shrugging on his shirt, he sits down beside Steve and nudges at his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“Don’t be sorry,” says Steve. “I wouldn’t, um, I thought you wanted—um. Me. Like that. But if you don’t, it’s not, yeah, you don’t have to be sorry.”

Oh God he sounds so sad. He sounds _so_ sad. _Don’t fuck this up, Stark._ “I did. I do.”

With his head down, Steve nods. It’s not just sadness. He looks _beaten._

“I brought Bucky back for you,” Tony says. He can hear the plea in his voice. Let it be enough. Don’t ask more of me, I don’t have anything more to give.

“I’m not in love with Bucky,” says Steve, his voice scraping over the words.

Tony stops breathing. He thinks the whole world must pause for a second, over that. Because of course Steve doesn’t mean, of course he, of course— “Don’t fuck with me. I swear to Christ, Steve, I can’t, don’t fuck with me.”

“More than I already did?” says Steve.

For a second, Tony can’t parse the meaning of that, and then he realizes it’s a joke. Captain America made a dirty joke. When he laughs, a few beats late, Steve’s lips curve up into a smile, and he puts his arm around Tony.

“This isn’t fair,” Tony says, but he cuddles into Steve, anyway. “I can’t—be this shitty to you, and still crawl to you for comfort.”

“Imagine what it’s like for me.” Steve brushes Tony’s hair back from his face. “I blew up your whole life, and I’m still living under your roof, practically begging you to let me touch you or be near you, so.”

Tony can hear how hard Steve’s trying to be flippant. He’s close to getting it right.

“I thought,” says Steve, shakily, “I thought that you’d still be there. When this all got figured out, I thought—I hadn’t said anything to you about how I felt, and I thought I’d figure out this thing with Bucky, get him in the clear, and then I’d come back to you and it would be—normal. I thought I’d have time, with you. I know it was stupid.”

“You’re not stupid.”

“And then everything blew up, and you found out what I’d—kept from you. And—you’re not shitty to me. You’re not shitty to me.” Steve kisses the side of Tony’s head. “I didn’t mean to, this wasn’t supposed to be asking for anything. I shouldn’t—I was taking advantage.”

Tony laughs weakly. “You weren’t taking advantage, you big dummy.”

“Well.” Steve tightens his arm. “Well. Just—it’s been hard. Seeing how sad you are.”

There’s a _hard_ joke to be made here. When Tony’s able to think clearly, at some future time when Steve’s not holding him like he intends to take care of him, he’ll think of a really clever one.

The problem is that he can’t imagine what this would look like, being with Steve this way, kissing him, fucking him, and then walking back out into the world that he helped make where Steve is an outlaw. He can’t imagine it, and a future that he can’t imagine scares him to fucking death. And he hates being scared. 

“Were we ever actually remotely stuck in this elevator?”

“Um.” Steve looks up at the elevator ceiling.

“Uh-huh.”

“Bucky wanted us to talk. He—um. He’s mad at me for not talking to you. Um. I don’t think—this, uh, the, uh—”

“Sex?” Tony suggests, tilting his head to one side to see Steve blush.

“—was part of the plan. He kept telling me I should tell you. How I felt about you. That I.” Steve looks down at Tony at the same moment Tony looks up at him, and he ducks a little more to brush their mouths together. “That I love you.”

Tony pulls him down by the hair and kisses him hard, because fuck it, if Captain America wants to kiss you, the future has to wait. Steve says “mmph” and kisses back, his hand resting lightly on Tony’s neck. They make out like teenagers for a while, but when Tony puts a hand on Steve’s cock, Steve shakes his head slightly. “Leave it,” he murmurs.

“I think I owe you an orgasm,” Tony says lightly. “That’s just, you know, the laws of reciprocity.”

Steve kisses his nose. He fucking kisses his _nose,_ and Tony doesn’t even mind. “Tell you what,” he says.

_Tell you what_ is what Steve says when he’s won and he’s trying to pretend that you didn’t lose. “What.” Steve doesn’t answer right away, and Tony nudges his nose into Steve’s chin. “Hey. What.”

“I don’t know. I love you. I don’t know what.”

“The last time there was an orgasm I panicked and I’m still kind of panicking so let’s actually take it a little bit slow?” Tony barks a laugh.

“Yeah.” Steve pulls Tony closer into him. “All of that. Because this is, you’re important to me. I want to get it right this time.”

Being around Captain America must rub off (ha ha) on a person after a while, because Tony finds himself thinking that this is the first time they’ve ever been in the same place with no lies between them. It’s a revoltingly sincere thought for him to have, but he can’t shake it off.

He can’t stop himself from thinking that it’s a fresh start.


End file.
